


Strings

by sarapunzel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Domestic, Domestic destiel, Guitar, M/M, bad company - Freeform, musician kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarapunzel/pseuds/sarapunzel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is taking guitar lessons at the local college, and he plays his most recent assignment for Dean. (Cas is a little baby-crazy, as well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strings

                Castiel was certain most classes weren’t like this one, but he didn’t particularly mind. The instructor, a middle-aged woman with long corkscrew curls and a permanent smile, preferred to be called “Lil”, rather than “Ms. Nancy McGill” as it read on the class registrar. There weren’t many students in this class, especially considering the popularity of string instruments, but Cas supposed it had something to do with the Friday evening meeting times. Most students simply couldn’t be bothered to show up for class at an hour that was religiously slotted for parties. But it didn’t bother Cas at all. The days tended to run together for him—all but Thursday, of course.

                The nine students were seated in the grass, in a semi-circle, all eyes focused on Lil, who was gesturing animatedly as she explained this weekend’s assignment. Cas sat cross-legged, the cheap black guitar laid gingerly across his lap like a precious artifact. Some of the other students had simply borrowed instruments from the school’s music department, and Cas had been fully prepared to do the same. However, from the moment he’d pitched the idea of taking the class, Dean had responded with unexpected enthusiasm. He’d driven the angel into town to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall sort of music store to pick out his own guitar. Cas liked the guitar shop. It was dimly-lit and dusty and it smelled like old wood. The walls were covered in vintage concert posters and flyers for local shows they would never attend, for bands with names like “Mike and the Motherfuckers” or “The Frosted Cosmic Turkey Basters”. It had been glorious enough just watching Dean’s expressions as the hunter trailed down the cramped aisles, tracing loving fingertips over strings and necks, occasionally mumbling, “This one, Cas,” and “No, wait, this one is fucking perfect.” He had pushed Cas down into a rickety chair in the corner of the shop and brought him guitar after guitar, setting them in the angel’s lap, trying to find one that looked right. Castiel smiled to himself, recalling with a happy little shiver the sensation of Dean standing over his shoulder, arms around him, positioning Cas’s hands along the frets and pressing lightly at his fingers, brushing them to and fro to draw whining, tentative cries from the instrument. They had decided on the shining black guitar after several minutes this way, the hunter’s chin resting on Castiel’s shoulder in a rare display of public affection. Normally, Dean was more or less aloof around Cas anywhere outside of their house, but something about the gentle shared vibration of un-tuned guitar strains thrumming through their skin, the relative emptiness of the music shop, or perhaps the rainy sleepiness of the weather had caused him to slip up. Cas knew Dean loved him, even if he could not fathom why, but it still always gave him an incomparable thrill to have it so plainly illustrated.

                “Now, I’ll let you in on a secret,” Lil was announcing, a conspiratorial spark in her brown eyes behind the little round spectacles. “A lot of folks overlook Bad Company. But don’t underestimate them! People tend to forget how much they influenced modern-day rock music.”

                She reached into her floral-patterned carpet bag and withdrew a stack of sheet music, holding it aloft as though it were the word of God himself. “I’ve selected a song for each of you to learn, all around the same difficulty level. You’ve got two weeks to work on getting it right, and don’t worry—I have faith in you all!” She giggled gleefully and began to pace around the semi-circle, handing out a couple pages to each student. Castiel took his assignment and surveyed it carefully. It didn’t look too difficult, really, especially because the angel seemed to have a sort of natural affinity for string instruments. (For which Dean had laughingly made some joke about playing a harp on a fluffy cloud, which had passed over Castiel’s understanding.) The bold title at the top of the page read, “Feel Like Making Love”, and Cas pulled out a highlighter to begin marking certain lines and notes, as he always did. It helped him to remember which parts were most important. Even though none of the other students did this, Cas felt he was disadvantaged. He was not human, not entirely, and sometimes the subtle meanings and nuances of music did not easily sink into the angel’s understanding. He had to make a conscious effort to note these things, because he was determined to perform perfectly, to prove to himself that he could be human. For Dean’s sake.

                The hunter did not know how taxing each day still was for Cas, even after all these years. Dean awoke in the morning at the same time, trudged to the shower, dressed in an ensemble similar but noticeably different from the day before, settled at the kitchen table to drink coffee and eat toast before shuffling off to work at the garage. He did all of these things almost mindlessly; a “creature of habit” Sam had called him. But for Cas, the daily routine was a struggle. The morning shower, the selecting of clothes, shaving his face; they were all so trivial, and Cas found it hard to remember to keep up with them all. At night, he did not truly sleep—he merely rested with his eyes shut. Sometimes, he imagined things in his head, as vividly as though they were real. He supposed it was as close to dreaming as he would ever experience. After an eternity, Cas had mastered the art of patience for the most part, and nights were made easier by the proximity of Dean’s gently snoring frame beside him. The majority of each night was spent the same way: Dean always fell asleep facing the middle of the bed, on the same side, and Cas waited till he was certain the hunter was fully unconscious before cautiously turning around, sheets rustling in the silence. Cas would wriggle closer to the center of the mattress, one eye open. He loved to watch Dean sleeping, because it was the only time Cas ever saw him look completely at ease. The lines smoothed from his forehead, lips slightly parted and dry from the Alaskan air coming in through the window, hands curled into loose fists at his chest. Castiel’s eyes would adjust to the darkness and then it would begin—the meticulous cataloguing of Dean’s features, the mapping of constellations between the freckles across the bridge of his nose. Cas knew Dean’s face, his body, his voice as well as he knew the phases of the moon or the shifting pattern of tectonic plates. It was a poetic arrangement in his head, the formulas and equations and blueprints of Dean’s assembly.

                But as a child rewinds his favorite movie and requests the same bedtime story every night, Cas would never tire of recounting every detail, reliving the experience of building this beautiful, complex mortal creature with his own hands. Cas had been but a mechanic, a simple engineer, following an artist’s guidelines. When the angel looked into Dean Winchester’s face, he wondered how he had ever questioned God’s existence. Only his Father could fashion such a gorgeous shape from scattered molecules and blind air.

                “Alright, class! Have fun! And as usual, if you have any questions, feel free to email or text me,” Lil reminded them with a wink. “See you all next week! Ramble on!”

                Cas stood and brushed the loose grass from his jeans, slugging the duffel bag over his shoulder and heading for the parking lot. Some of the other students were talking loudly, excitedly, about some function they would attend later in the night. Cas heard one of them, a lanky boy with a wild mane of tufty brown hair, exclaim, “Man, it’s gonna be fucking _cray_!” Castiel’s face scrunched at the strange word. The boy couldn’t be older than twenty, and humans of that age were always a little difficult for Cas to comprehend. They were fidgety and loud, so unlike how Dean had been at that age. It saddened him a little, to observe the contrast between the carefree, wide-eyed youths at college, and the already-broken, road-toughened boy Dean had been. Cas had watched him from afar ( _very_ afar) since the day in 1979 when Mary Winchester had produced him, wet and pink and screaming.  And for as long as the hunter had been in the world, he had been in battle. Dean had been born a warrior, brought into the universe marked for pain. But it was another testament to God’s grace that Dean hadn’t been sent into the world entirely alone. He walked on hot coals and bled upon the earth, but had he dared to imagine it, to believe it, he might have listened and heard the rustling of wings just behind him. Cas had followed as closely as he dared, invisible and intangible footsteps in the prints left by his human charge.

                Castiel unlocked the driver’s side door of the Impala and slid into the seat, nestling his guitar into the foot space of the passenger side. He turned the ignition and licked his lips as the engine awoke, rumbling like some sleepy dragon. The familiar thump of bass weaved around him from the speakers as the Impala pulled out onto the highway, eerily lit by the timeless Alaskan midnight sun.

 

                “Layla, aren’t you hungry?” Cas asked the little orange cat twining herself around his ankles. Her crooked tail twitched and she mewed as though in response, pressing her face into the angel’s calf. “Your food is right there.”

                Cas pointed to the metal bowl on the floor, freshly filled with cat food that smelled vaguely like the filet mignon it was modeled after. The cat stared up into Castiel’s face, round amber eyes pleading for something. “Fine. Okay,” Cas relented, and kneeled to stroke her head. She immediately began to purr and rub herself into the angel’s palm, eyes shut in happiness. “You pitiful thing. I wasn’t gone so long.”

                The cat had bonded closely with him since Dean had given in and allowed her to live inside the house as opposed to having her simply stalk their back patio. Castiel didn’t know how old she was, where she’d come from, or why she had suddenly shown up, but her presence had sparked something in him he could not properly explain. He settled on the floor, the guitar lying beside him with the sheet music strewn across the body. Layla let out a rolling mewl from her throat and crawled into Cas’s lap eagerly, pawing at his chest. He scratched under her chin absentmindedly, watching the thin needle of the clock on the wall. He willed it to move.

                Dean still hadn’t come home from work, and it was nearing nine-thirty now. It wasn’t a wholly unorthodox occurrence; Dean was obsessed with his work. He had always been fantastic with cars, and Cas knew that he found it therapeutic to bend over the hood of a vehicle for hours. “There’s a lot of crap in this world I don’t get, but I sure as hell know how to work on a car,” Dean had slurred over his pint of beer just last week. Cas had smiled at the pride in the hunter’s voice. It was a relief to see Dean content, at last. Strange, how he did not accept any praise or accolade for having rescued the planet more than once, but he would admit to his skills as a mechanic.

                “He’ll be home soon,” Cas said to the cat in his lap, but he was speaking more to himself.

                Layla snuggled into his thigh and kneaded paws into his socked feet. Cas sighed, and that lurch of overwhelming affection rose in his stomach again. He swallowed back a bizarre kind of half-sob, and rolled his eyes upward to the ceiling. The stove-pipe tail swished around to curl over his hip and Cas reached down, intending to finally correct the deformity. Layla suddenly leapt away, ears back and eyes wide, offended. “What? You like it better that way?” Cas inquired dubiously. The cat merely sat down and began to lick one of her front paws, and Cas could swear there was an indignant haughtiness to Layla’s manner. _But_ , he reasoned, _all cats are a little stuffy_. “Okay, keep your crooked tail, then.”

                Layla slinked over to her bowl and finally began to eat. Cas pulled the guitar into his vacated lap and dragged his fingers across the strings fondly. Dean had bought him a little case of guitar picks, but Cas preferred the sensation of the threads biting his fingertips. He reveled in the pain of it, at the way the skin there slowly roughened and numb. He could easily restore them, banish the calluses with a single thought. But a week ago, Cas had discovered the effect his new, fret-frayed fingertips could have when traced along Dean’s bare skin. The hunter had not said a word about it, but the quiet moan erupting from his throat had been proof enough. Besides, there was an inexplicable pleasure the angel derived from the contact of his hands with the strings, wrists humming with the electric shiver of sound. So Cas allowed the guitar to wound him, and in return he made her sing.

                The new song assignment was simply arranged, easy to remember. Castiel played each line repeatedly, eyes fluttering with each highlighted bar as he committed them to memory. He had heard the song before, on several long car rides with Dean to Anchorage or shorter, aimless treks to Denali. But hearing the song through a set of speakers was incomparable to stroking the music out into the air himself. He smiled and, as his fingers worked instinctively, he started to sing along.

 

                It was hours later when Dean finally came through the front door, Bobby having dropped him off around ten-twenty-four. The sun still glared down as though nighttime were a laughable idea. _Alaska is fucked-up_ , Dean thought, but strange had always suited him. _Might as well embrace the weird._ He shrugged off his old leather jacket, now fading at the joints, the collar as soft and pliable as velvet. Layla the cat assaulted him the moment his boots crossed the threshold, meowing incessantly until he agreed to scoop her up in his arms. It had taken an embarrassingly brief space of time for the little tabby to worm her way into Dean’s affections. At first he had been leery of the idea of adopting her, certain that she would only be messy and smelly and annoying. She _was_ a little annoying, what with her constant noise and purring presence. But after the first time Dean had awoken to find her curled in a ball on the pillow beside him in bed, he had known there was no getting rid of her. Cas and Dean had been on the fence about what to call her for some time. Cas, of course, simply called her ‘Cat’ (which had naturally influenced Sam to make all sorts of _Breakfast At Tiffany_ ’s jokes until Dean told him to shove it). Finally, Dean had decided on Layla, after listening to the Eric Clapton song for the millionth time. There was no context for the name; he simply liked the sound of it.

                Although, Dean could reflect back on the one human Layla he had met in his life. Her face was etched irrevocably into his mind, even after the long years since he’d seen her. He supposed she was gone now, long gone, and this realization shook him. It had been the final deciding factor for the cat’s name; Dean wished to honor the woman who had first awakened the stirrings of faith within him.

                As he walked into the den to find a beautiful, dark-haired angel perched on the floor, Dean thought: _Yeah, nowadays I certainly believe_.

                “You’re still up?” Dean asked, settling into a chair and pulling off his boots. Cas looked up, his face full of startling, unabashed love. It would always surprise Dean to see it; he did not think there would ever come a day when he was not taken aback by the sheer volume of Castiel’s adoration.

                “You were gone.”

                “Not gone, Cas,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “Just got stuck working on this gorgeous old Corvette. Crazy paint job. Had damn wings painted on the sides.” He chuckled. “Cheesy as hell, but I gotta admit, I kinda liked it.”

                Layla sprawled out on her side, the fuzzy limbs extending out as she stretched and yawned. “Attention whore,” Dean murmured, but he rubbed the cat’s belly dutifully. She gave him a complacent stare and he scoffed in response. “You know it, too.”

                Cas watched the hunter and the cat while his stomach twisted in knots. Dean’s eyelids were lowered, the lashes nearly blacking out the green of his eyes, and a faint smile pulled at one side of his lips. Castiel breathed heavily, and that nagging sense of longing overcame him once more. The sight of his human beloved, legs bent beneath him, showering the lesser creature with attention—it pricked at a part of Castiel’s Grace, or perhaps the fledgling bits of a rudimentary soul, that he had never given much thought to. The entirety of the world was an injured dove in the hands of the angel, and he found himself desperate to cure all the pains he encountered. He wanted to sew together all the broken pieces of the universe, as he had reassembled Dean, as he had healed countless unfortunate souls. But lately, that unmovable, heavy love he felt for Dean and the compassion he held for all forms of life had branched into a newer, sharper ache in his head. Castiel wanted this love to grow, to filter into a different endeavor; finally he had given words to the thought and he admitted to Dean that he wanted to become a parent.

                Dean had not reacted favorably to this development.

                “Cas, I’ve done the dad thing,” Dean had told him firmly, voice steady even as his eyes glittered, “and it did not end well. You know what I had to do, what you had to do. I just can’t. It’s not meant to happen for me.”

                But Cas could sense the hidden desire there, the pull that Dean himself could not bring to words. _And_ , Cas thought as he observed Dean and Layla, _a cat is not like a child, but Dean is as much a father as a man could be, even if he doesn’t know it himself_. Cas had watched Dean care for Ben, play with him, teach him, tuck him into bed at night. Even before that, Cas had stood by as Dean spent years doing the same for his own brother. Dean had been a father from the beginning.

                “What?” Dean was asking, brows furrowed. Cas realized he had been staring.

                “Nothing,” Cas replied quickly. Dean’s gaze shifted to the guitar.

                “Okay… How was class?” he asked casually, standing up to get a beer from the fridge. He brought one for Cas, as well, although the angel was not a great fan. Cas preferred vodka and whiskey—things with stronger flavors that burned as they slid down his throat.

                Taking the bottle from Dean, Cas replied, “Mostly uneventful. One of the girls cried.”

                Dean snorted. “What happened?”

                “She was—frustrated by the difficulty of the lesson.”

                “I bet,” Dean laughed. “So what about you?”

                “What about me?”

                “The lesson. Learning how to play. It’s easy for you, right?”

                Cas shrugged and lighted drifting fingertips down the spine of the guitar. “I suppose, yes.”

                “So, got any homework?” Dean continued, clearly amused by the phrase. “I feel like I’m talking to my kid right now.”

                Something fluttered in Castiel’s chest. A heart, perhaps. “I have an assignment.” The angel lifted the sheet music up. “I have two weeks to work on this.”

                “But I’m guessing you’ve got it down already,” Dean added. Cas nodded and a smile crept across his lips unbidden. It was a petty talent, a useless ability, but it still warmed the angel to see the flicker of pride in Dean’s eyes. He was impressed by the strangest things.

                “More or less.”

                “So?” Dean prompted, eyebrows hitched up. He tilted the beer back and took a gulp. “You gonna play the song or not?”

                “Now?” Cas asked, suddenly feeling unusually nervous. He longed for the days when nothing could fray his nerves, when he was numb to the universe, impervious to these heavy human emotions. But Dean was watching him, unblinking, expectant. And Cas had found over time that there was no sense in trying to argue when Dean looked this way. He could deny him nothing.

                “No, next week. Of course, _now_ , Cas.”

                “Okay,” Cas relented, swallowing his anxiety, manifesting like a lump in his throat. He arranged the guitar more comfortably across his lap, hooking one arm around the slender neck. “You know the song,” he added, wriggling to one side slightly to get a better view of the sheet music on the floor in front of him. He cleared his throat and began to strum out the opening riff.

                Cas opened his mouth and the words spilled out, raspy and soft. “ _Baby, when I think about you, I think about love_.” He shut his eyes, the world fading black behind heavy curtains as the song swelled around him. “ _Darling, don’t live without you and your love_.”

                The angel’s eyes were still closed, but if they had been open, he would have observed a change overtaking the scene, as Dean inhaled deeply and his face suddenly went slack. He looked years younger, lighter—and if only Cas had seen him, he would have immediately dropped his guitar and crossed the room to kiss the upturned lips, the song forgotten. But the angel did not see anything, and so he continued to play and sing. “ _I would wrap you in the Heavens, ‘til I’m dying_.”

                With the chorus nigh, Castiel’s blue eyes opened and his fingers brushed more aggressively at the strings, focused on the yellow highlighted section of notes. _Important_.

“ _Feel like making love_ ,” he sang, and Dean was awed by the angel’s ability to mimic the expressive, sensual tone perfectly. “ _Feel like making love to you.”_ And the ocean-gaze flicked upward to burn into Dean’s face. The hunter grinned. _Cheeky bastard_ , he thought, torn between the urge to laugh and to tear the guitar out of Castiel’s arms and pull at his hair.

                The angel simply continued to sing and elicit gorgeous, measured notes from the instrument, looking every bit the part of a natural musician. Dean had not expected this at all. In fact, he had thought Cas would simply take on the class from a theoretical, scientific standpoint. After all, Cas was usually fascinated by the mechanisms of things, more than the actual practice of them. Dean had hoped to wring a few easy songs out of this; “Smoke on the Water”, maybe—the sorts of songs every beginner learns quickly. He certainly hadn’t anticipated the way it would make him feel. But Cas was nearing the end of the song already, and Dean couldn’t help but move closer, crossing the scuffed wooden floor between them. He sat inches away now, entranced by the grace of the angel’s fingers, sliding across the frets, stroking the notes from the strings with ease.

                “ _And if I had the sun and moon, and they were shining, I would give you both day and night, love satisfying_.”

                Castiel was similarly entranced, drinking in the warmth of Dean’s flesh so nearby, sketching imaginary configurations between his freckles as he always seemed to do, eager to finish the song so that he could move on to his next endeavor. “ _Feel like making love to you_ ,” he finished, drawing out the last word. And he did.

                There was an electric sort of moment between the end of the song and start of the kiss.

                “You don’t even know, do you?” Dean was murmuring, close to Castiel’s ear so that his neck prickled from the hunter’s breath. “You don’t know what you do to me.”

                Cas could not reply. He only pushed the guitar away and linked his fingers with Dean’s, spilling forward to lean into the next meeting of lips. He sighed into the hunter’s mouth, and he felt fingers creep up the back of his neck to tangle gently in his hair. “Never thought I’d be the groupie type of guy, but…”

                “If you like it, I will play for you every day,” Cas promised earnestly.

                Dean grinned against the angel’s lips, then pulled back and asked, “Why are you so good to me, Cas?” His tone was feather-light, but the stony wake of his eyes betrayed him. It wasn’t a rhetorical question, not really.

                Cas gazed at him for a moment before replying, “Because I love you.” He sighed. “Desperately.”

                Dean looked rather alarmed by this answer. “Well…”

                That damned pounding of the human heart in Castiel’s chest was nearly audible now, and to make matters worse, the familiar flurry of that other thing, that unmistakable and unnamable desire, was spiraling through his gut and before he could stop himself Cas had uttered, “Dean, I think we should—I think we should get a baby.”

                The hunter shook his head and quickly dove in to capture the angel’s mouth with his own. “Shut up, we aren’t talking about that. Don’t ruin the moment, Cas,” he muttered, so close his moving lips grazed Castiel’s jaw. “Just don’t say anything. Okay?”

                The angel felt his stomach turning, and he could have sworn he understood all at once the human sensation of heartbreak. But he could not deny Dean. He’d never been able to, not without tearing himself apart. So he simply nodded, and he did not argue when Dean pulled him up by the hand and led him away to the bedroom down the hall. He said nothing intelligible as Dean left tracks of kisses down his body and loved him into the mass of sheets, arms and legs entwined. Castiel only moaned and gasped as Dean pulled, pushed, and broke him apart. No words passed his lips as the curls of pleasure licked and spun within him, like a thousand burning strings. He said only, “ _Dean_ ,” when he came, hot and wet but aching. And the angel was silent all the night through, curled into the hunter’s bare chest that heaved peacefully as he slept.

                Castiel did not sleep.

                But that did not prevent the dreams.


End file.
